Machinery & Electric Motors is open for business at 844 Lake Street in the 1950’s.
Family business
This is the story of a family machinery business that rose, boldly to meet
unprecedented challenges in an ever-changing industry.
C
hicago is America’s dream writ large. And it’s written flamboyantly. It has...as they used to whisper about a town’s fast
woman...a reputation. It’s an attribute of which the city’s people
including the respectable are, we suspect, secretly proud. During
the early 20 th century, Harold Goldstein grew up in a Chicago
when an industrial base was being built to provide the economic
backbone for the city’s future. Heavy industry, warehouses, and
railroad yards crowded the banks of the Chicago River. Close by
were the working men’s homes, usually frame buildings of one or
two stories. In those days, Chicago was different. On a map, the
city was but one link in a solid industrial chain that ran north and
south along the branches of the Chicago River permeated by the
smell of a “rancid, sensual, and strong” scent throughout the area.
The smoke belching out of the largest smokestacks all but
obscured other dominant structures like the steeples of the various
ethnic churches. Chicago was a patchwork quilt of vibrant ethnic
neighborhoods that constituted alternative sources for ideas and
values beyond the ideological influence of employers and the
dominant middle class culture. Every four or five blocks, it was a
different ethnic group: Jewish, Pole, Bohemian, Italian, Irish,
German. It was a world rift of tremendous power and effects on
the lives of these immigrant workers and their families. The obvious determination was to sustain old-world values and customs in
the new urban industrial environment. This was the world that
Harold Goldstein lived in and it was a kind of Americanization
from the bottom up. While clinging to their own cultures, many
individuals like Harold found a common ground with the various
elements represented in this new, burgeoning industry, and in the
process gained a greater degree of control over his own life.
Harold’s father, Charlie Goldstein, was in the scrap business,
and the name of his company was Charles Goldstein Scrap.
Charlie discovered that he could make more money by selling a
scrapped machine as a useable
machine rather than breaking it
up and melting it down. He
formed a new company in 1934,
Machinery & Electric Motors,
and became active in buying and
selling toolroom and production
equipment. Charley set up shop
at 815 West Lake Street in the
midst of what would become
Chicago’s infamous “Machinery
Row.” During the 1930’s, Harold
Goldstein had dropped out of his
freshman year of high
school to help the family business. In the ‘40’s, the Goldstein
Harold Goldstein
family built a new building at
844 Lake Street, and moved Machinery & Electric Motors to their
new location. The Machinery Dealers National Association
(MDNA) was formed in 1941, Machinery & Electric Motors and
the Adams Machinery Company, were two of the first charter
members of the new association. Prior to World War II, Harold
was a representative of Lima Drives, which were used in the U.S.
to switch over from line shaft equipment to machines with individual drives for changing gears. The Lima Drive was a four
speed gear box that would change the motor speed of the
machine. In addition to representing Lima Drives, he was also a
distributor of new electric motors. This would give Goldstein a
very high priority during the war coupled with the fact that he had
a wife and two children at home.
Family business
Harold Goldstein, in the rear right of the picture, with hand against a machine at the Harris Gear Plant (later Massey Ferguson) in
Racine, Wisconsin in 1945. (Note the line shafting and belting of a bygone era.)
He didn’t go into military service until 1944, and being in his
mid-twenties, Harold was older than the 19 year old draftees he
was stationed with in the army. Being a businessman, Harold was
recruited by the base commander to run his office because of his
organizational skills.
After the war, the industry was still young and Harold was
younger. He had started in the family business, which was very
successful, but he was nonetheless restless for something a little
different. Harold’s responsibilities were beginning to mount on
the home-front as his wife was expecting their third child. He
decided to go out on his own. Harold had come up through the
Great Depression, some people are more aggressive than others.
Goldstein never doubted that anything he intended to do, he could
do. His only ambition in life was to be just a little bit better off
the next day than he was the day before. And to learn a little more
than he did the day before. Harold would always be telling his
sons, “You don’t know...what you don’t know.” So he was always
reading and studying, Goldstein didn’t even have a high school
diploma, but this man earned a degree in survival on the street.
This inner intellectual toughness served Harold well, and it acted
as a model for his drive and determination. In 1951, Harold was
elected chairman of the Chicago MDNAChapter. In the following
year, Harold Goldstein and Henry Cohen formed Cadillac
Machinery Company Inc., and set up shop at 816 Lake Street. In
the beginning, it was a struggle as the used machinery business is
a very capital intensive business. Harold had little money and
what money he made, he put right back into the business by buying general tool room equipment. They began to specialize in
NATCO Drills and probably built a larger inventory of NATCO
Drills than all other U.S. dealers combined. NATCO eventually
went bankrupt because they built a drill that would last, and thereby, reduced the need to buy new, or you could buy a good used
NATCO Drill for half the cost of new. Harold was very bright and
ambitious and entrepreneurial. He was swimming in the waters
with some of industry’s greatest sharks, and yet there were no
tooth marks on him. He was tough and shrewd, and he would go
on to survive and endure, creating with his desires and ambitions
the modern structure of a machinery company.
During World War II, and later the Marshall Plan, many surplus American machine tools had been shipped to Europe on the
lend-lease plan for war and the rebuilding efforts afterwards.
When the war ended, Great Britain undertook a national, industrialization modernization program by giving British industry tax
breaks to dispose of their surplus lend-lease machines from the
U.S. This was an enticement for the British buyer to buy new
British made machine tools. Harold recognized this large reservoir
of U.S. made machine tools as a great buying opportunity. He
began to go to Europe on a regular basis in the 1950’s to purchase
inventory. As luck would have it, there would be a great demand
for larger machine tools in the ‘60’s, as the U.S. entered the space
race to try and catch up with the Soviet Union. Previously in this
country, there never had been a need for very large machines on
the scale that the space program needed, but Europe had them and
were willing to part with them. Harold’s introduction to the
European dealer would prove to have long-term benefits for him
and his company. As the business progressed, Cadillac Machinery
soon outgrew the confines of their 25 foot wide by 100 foot long
storefront location on Lake Street. Goldstein and Cohen began to
rent warehouse space on Chicago’s Kingsbury Street approximately three miles from their Lake Street location. The city and
the nation were beginning to change in the early ‘60’s. Speed was
of the essence. Everything was being done on a much more accelerated level. Time was money.
Family business
Although Chicago long had been the nation’s railroad hub, more
and more businessmen were flying to get there faster. Machinery
dealers were now taking airplanes more than they were riding
trains to conduct business. Lake and Clinton Streets with their
close proximity to Union Station and the Northwestern Train
Station were beginning to lose their relevancy to the market.
The ideal industrial community
Texas oilman, Clint Murchison, and Chicago hotel magnate,
Jay Pritzker, initiated a joint venture in the ‘60’s to form a new
concept for industrial America. Murchison, a long time financial
backer of Lyndon Baines Johnson’s political career, had entered
the East Texas oil fields with no money back in the early 1930’s.
Through persistence and grappling for credit to drill, Murchison
and his partner, Dudley Golden, cashed out with millions in three
short years. Jay Pritzker was a billionaire philanthropist, and
founder of the Hyatt Hotel chain. The Pritzker family is one of
Chicago’s wealthiest families. The venture envisioned a model
community where half of the community would be for workers’
residential homes and the other half would be for industry backing up to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. The residents
would work in the community’s industrial facilities, and the
enclave of industrial businesses would support the community’s
tax base. The joint venture partners bought farm land West of the
airport and they began to cut streets into it, partitioned lots off,
and began to sell it off lot-by-lot. Harold Goldstein and Henry
Cohen bought land in what would be known as the Centex
Industrial Park in Elk Grove Village, Illinois. Cadillac Machinery
built their present-day building and moved to Elk Grove Village
in 1967. They were the second machinery dealer to move there
(RACO Industrial Corporation now in nearby Des Plaines, was
the first to build in Elk Grove Village). Today the Centex
Industrial Park is approximately two miles wide and three miles
long, and it’s one of the largest industrial parks in the world.
Harold was large on the MDNAlandscape. He was contributing more and more of his time battling for an investment tax credit on used machinery. In 1966, he appeared as the MDNAfirst
vice president and Government Affairs Committee Chairman, to
plead the case for the used machinery industry before the House
Ways and Means Committe chaired by the powerful Arkansas
Congressman, Wilbur Mills. Also that year, Harold appeared
before the Senate Finance Committee on Capital Hill. He presented MDNA’s request for the removal of the $50,000 limitation on
used capital property when the seven percent investment credit
suspension was to be lifted. In 1967, Harold Goldstein was elected MDNApresident at their 26th annual convention in San
Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel and served a one year term. Following
Harold’s presidency, the MDNApublished the following tribute in
their May 12, 1968 issue of What’s Happening: “The progress
made in the 1967-68 year by the MDNAis virtually unparalleled.
We cannot begin to enumerate here all the many areas in which
we have progressed. This, of course, could not have been accomplished without the leadership and guidance displayed by our
President Harold Goldstein. With your help in past years, as well
Michael Goldstein
as this year, Harold, our association and our industry have profited tremendously. Thank you Harold, for unselfishly giving us of
your time and professional know-how.” The MDNAwas entering
into a new era of industry leadership, and Harold Goldstein had
played an important role in this initiative on behalf of the association.
Harold’s oldest son, Michael, enrolled at Michigan State
University (MSU) in East Lansing, Michigan, and was majoring
in engineering, but graduated in business administration with an
accounting major and engineering minor in 1964. Harold
Goldstein felt hardship was necessary for life to be good. Harold
felt if you didn’t know hardship, you didn’t know when you had it
good. Many parents didn’t want their children to go through the
same hardships but Harold didn’t look at it that way. He would
tell his sons, “This is what you do”, and the boys would do it. He
was a firm believer that they had to know things weren’t always
that easy, and there was a price you pay for everything. By 1964,
40% of Cadillac Machinery’s business was in gear machinery.
Harold wanted Michael to work for a gear shop where he could
see gear machines cutting gears, and be in that kind of environment before joining Cadillac Machinery. One of Cadillac
Machinery’s good customers, the Steel Products Engineering
Company (SPECO), was manufacturing transmissions for Bell
Helicopters and radar housing installations for Nike missiles in
Springfield, Ohio. At this time, SPECO was owned by Kelsey
Hayes, and unbeknownst to the Goldsteins, the U.S. government
was gearing up for the Viet Nam War by placing orders for helicopter gunships. Bell Helicopter was extremely busy and couldn’t
make them fast enough. SPECO received a directive from corporate headquarters that they wanted a complete inventory of every
machine tool they had in the Springfield facilities. Due to the
buildup of helicopter orders, the Springfield plant was maxed out
in trying to keep up with production schedules.
Family business
They didn’t want to go through the time-consuming exercise of
finding a qualified person to do the inventory. So, immediately
upon graduation, Harold had arranged a job for Michael with
SPECO in Springfield, Ohio. Michael arrived in Springfield,
Ohio, after graduation, and for the next three months pulled a
complete inventory of all capital equipment in both SPECO facilities. After completing the inventory, Michael left SPECO in
September of 1964, and went back to Chicago to join Cadillac
Machinery. Michael had spent his high school and college summers working for Cadillac, and was very familiar with its operating procedures. In 1966, Michael was married to his wife Marsha
Feder.
In 1971, negotiations were underway between Cadillac
Machinery Company Inc. and Daldi Matteucci (DEMM) for the
importing and representation of the Italian company’s gear sound
testing machines in the United States. Harold was set to go to
Italy to wrap up the contractual agreements, but a few days before
his departure date, he ended up in the hospital with a broken foot.
It fell upon Michael to complete the deal. Harold and Michael
held a series of meetings on all the details of the negotiations and
the resolutions, for determining the completion of the contract.
Michael was off to Milan, Italy, and after three days of negotiating with Daldi Matteucci, it appeared the deal was done. Michael
called his Chicago bank to wire transfer funds, and at that time
the bank informed him that U.S. President Richard Nixon had just
taken the U.S. off the gold standard. It was back to square one
and the negotiations started anew. Once the contract had been
renegotiated and completed, Michael moved to Bologna to live.
He commuted 60 miles one way, every day in a Fiat 124 Spider
convertible to work in Daldi Matteucci’s factory at Porretta
Terme. The city of Porretta Terme was between Bologna and
Florence in the Italian Alps. It was an exhilarating and fulfilling
three month experience for Michael that would leave a lasting
impressions on him and Cadillac Machinery.
The Locator
With a family background of being an MDNACharter member, Michael Goldstein became very active in the association as
soon as he joined Cadillac Machinery. Michael served in the different chairs of the Chicago Chapter but never served as Chapter
Chairman. When Harold Mason of Ball Machinery was the
Chicago Chapter Chairman, he wasn’t interested in traveling to
Board of Director meetings several times a year, and Michael was
asked to be the Chicago Chapter representative in place of their
chairman. Like his father, Michael felt a deep, abiding commitment to the MDNA. It’s a commitment born from a charter membership when the MDNA was a fledgling entity, and to his father,
who had brought the association scope, imagination, and strength.
Michael joined the MDNABoard of Directors in 1968. After joining the MDNABoard, Michael became involved with the Locator,
the association’s national advertising directory. The Locator was
under the MDNAaffiliate, Machinery Dealers National
Information Systems (MDNIS). He was both an MDNIS trustee
and on the MDNABoard of Directors for a couple of years, and
later was informed that no member could be both an MIS trustee
Convention Co-chairwoman Marsha & Co-chairman Michael
rarely stood this still during a busy 1991 MDNAConvention.
and an MDNAboard member, so he had to make a decision. In
effect, he was torn between two equally powerful and conflicting
orbits. The Locator was locked in a tough, competitive struggle
for advertising listings with two well established used equipment
directories: The Surplus Record and the Used Equipment
Directory (UED). The publication needed strong stewardship to
build its base and become a dominant player in the market.
Michael was smart, fresh, and very intuitive, and although there
may have been more prestige for you and your company to be a
member of the Board, he felt the Locator needed to track its own
course, away from some of the already accepted judgments of the
day. Michael chose the Locator. It was the right choice. Goldstein
was gifted and graceful with the English language, though he had
not come up through any of the publishing ranks; he had a special
feeling for the profession. He could phrase ideas and feelings
well, and loved doing it, as in all endeavors language does matter.
He started by going through the different chairs at MDNIS for
eight years, and was elected president of MDNIS in 1981 to 1983,
and would serve on its Executive Committee for the next 15
years. By being the president of MDNIS, Michael was automatically given a seat on the MDNABoard of Directors. He would
continue on the MDNA Board of Directors for another 17 years,
and served on the Board’s Executive Committee for 13 of those
17 years. Currently Michael heads up the investment committee
for the MDNA’s Austin D. Lucas Scholarship Fund. This is a
scholarship fund where member contributions are invested, and
the student grants are taken from only the interest so the principal
is not touched. It’s available for the children of association member firm employees and not for the members themselves.
Family business
not only here in this country but from other parts of the world.
He began to visualize a magazine that would serve these purposes. Michael had the experience, knowledge, and tenacity to make
it happen. In 1984, Goldstein founded “Gear Technology, the
Journal of Gear Manufacturing”, to serve their industry. He felt it
would be a profitable business and the more he made, the more
he plowed back into the business; like his father had done in the
machinery business nearly a quarter of a century earlier. It was an
instrument to extend the gear industry throughout the U.S. and
the world. Today Gear Technology is 17 years old with a circulation of 14,000 units, and paid subscribers in 56 nations worldwide. The publication’s website is geartechnology.com which
delivered 110,000 pages last month, and there is another website
called powertransmission.com, in which manufacturers advertise
gears to sell, delivered 130,000 pages last month.
Richard (Dick) Goldstein
There is a serendipity effect in business dealings, and this is
the best way to describe how Michael became the architect of this
country’s leading gear manufacturing publication. By this time,
Cadillac Machinery was establishing itself as one of the world’s
top used gear machinery dealers. When the MDNIS was looking
into buying computerized typesetting for the Locator and they
were asking for volunteers, most people looked at the task as an
obligation but Michael seized the opportunity to head up a committee to find a typesetter. When the Locator wanted volunteers to
buy a main frame computer, once again Michael volunteered for
the task. Like his father, he was forcing himself to learn what he
didn’t know, and he found it intellectually stimulating. Michael’s
predecessor at MDNIS was Karl Stevens, and he would always
consult and explain to Michael why he was making his decisions,
and asking for Goldstein’s opinions regarding his conclusions.
He was not only a good leader, but a mentor. During Stevens’
Locator presidency, his wife became terminally ill, and he asked
Michael to take over the MDNIS presidency in his absence so he
could be with his wife. During that time, Michael and MDNIS
negotiated a new printing contract. He had accumulated a lot of
knowledge and became fascinated with the publishing business;
it was devotion to every detail in publishing which made him so
important in the gear technology business, for he would help
determine what the gear industry first read, and then what the
readers thought about within the context of their own businesses.
Michael Goldstein was always thinking ahead. He was an enterprising, young machinery dealer, always searching for his next
big chance. Goldstein had learned first-hand that if his customers
were going to grow and prosper; they needed to learn their craft
better and faster, and thus, they needed access to this information
After his Locator presidency, Michael Goldstein was asked to
head up a committee to investigate and set up an electronic communication system for the industry. Along with Norman Gagne,
Karl Stevens, and Shelly Berman, they put together idle computer time at McDonald Douglas with a nationwide communications
system with entry modules in every major city, and arranged for
the building and purchase of dumb terminals. (The personal computer (PC) had not been introduced yet.) The committee produced an informational and training video for operation, manuals,
forms, pricing—in effect creating a new product, and the introduction of the Machine Automated Transaction Exchange
(MATE) system in May of 1984. This system would evolve into
Super Mate, and then into the present-day Super Fax Mate system. At the same time Michael was involved with the Mate system, he was launching Gear Technology’s first issue in June of
1984.
The other son, Richard Goldstein, with his Jay Gatsby good
looks had taken his time. He was in no hurry. Richard (Dick)
Goldstein joined Cadillac Machinery in 1974. Dick received his
Masters of Business Administration (MBA) at the prestigious
University of Chicago in 1969. Upon graduation, Dick went to
work for the American National Bank of Chicago to work as a
commercial loan officer, and poured himself into the job learning
how money works. After joining Cadillac Machinery, Dick
became involved with the MDNAworking his way up to
Chairman of the Chicago MDNAChapter in 1993 to 1995. He
has been on the MDNABoard of Directors since 1993. With his
banking background, Dick was a perfect fit for administration
and putting together plant deals for the company. In 1976, he
spear-headed a joint venture auctioneering company in England.
It was called Industrial Plants Corporation UK Limited, and it
was in partnership with Industrial Plants Corporation of New
York. The company operated for 10 years, and Dick handled all
the financial operations for the auctioneering entity. It was typical
of the Goldsteins that they expanded and strengthened their operation first on the business side; the publishing expansion that
came later was in reality an inevitable by-product of their business success, the rationale being: we have the money and leverage, why not use it for something.
Family business
Kash Chadha
Dick, while not being the visionary, swashbuckling force his
father had been, was a far better and more orderly businessman
in the traditional sense, and he slowly brought more order to the
family business. If he was not the man to create a business
dominion, then he was the man to hold it.
A man called Kash
Kash Chadha was born in Rawalpindi, India in 1939.
Rawalpindi would be the capital city of Pakistan from 1959 to
1969. Kash was a bright, young student who studied mechanical
engineering at the Government of India Technical School from
1957 to 1962, and served as a journeyman with the Ministry of
Defense, Bombay. From 1962 to 1965, Kash received specialized training in machine tool building with companies such as
Waldrich Coburg, Kapp, Deckel, Lasco and Wotan in Germany;
Mikron and Bondy S.A. in Switzerland; Csepel in Hungary; and
Ribon in Italy. After returning to India, Kash worked one year
with Mahindra and Mahindra, and four years as a plant engineer
with Tata Engineering and the Locomotive, Bombay: manufacturers of machine tools; Mecedez Benz trucks and buses; and
Pawling and Harnischfeger (P&H) earthmoving and farming
equipment. Kash worked on the installation, sales, and service of
Czechoslovakian gear hobbers, gear shapers, and other European
machine tools in Canada from 1970 to 1978. He was the lead
man in the rebuilding of machine tools at SKF Ball Bearing
Company in Toronto for two years.
In 1977, Kash was a service engineer for a Czechoslovakian
company called Omnitrade Machinery in Toronto, Ontario,
Canada. Omnitrade wasn’t selling or servicing machines in the
U.S. in 1977. A Chicago-area manufacturer had gone to Eastern
Europe and bought one of their machines. After the machine
arrived at the manufacturer ’s plant, he needed the machine serviced, and at that time, there was no service backup in the states.
The manufacturer went to Omnitrade in Toronto to plead for
somebody to service their machine. Finally, the Canadian director
of Omnitrade Machinery sent Kash Chadha to Chicago to service
the machine. At the time, Cadillac Machinery needed a shop
foreman, and they put a classified ad in the Chicago Tribune
advertising for one. Kash arrived in Chicago on a Friday, and
worked at the Chicago manufacturer ’s plant all day. He needed
parts, and they couldn’t be flown in until the following Monday.
Kash was sitting in his hotel room reading the Sunday Chicago
Tribune, and he spotted Cadillac’s ad. He called Cadillac
Machinery and talked to Harold Goldstein. They set up a series
of meetings to discuss the details of the foremanship. There was
one little hitch, Mrs. Chadha had a few preliminary doubts. She
had some of Chicago’s illustrious historical figures in the back of
her mind, like Al Capone, Frank Nitti, and Bugs Moran. Harold
Goldstein was a marvelous salesman. He knew what he wanted,
and he knew what and who he was selling, and he could always
put himself in the position of other people. He was sure Cadillac
Machinery could help Kash Chadha and his family, and likewise,
Kash could help Cadillac Machinery. Harold made himself
almost irresistable to the Chadha family, as he ferried them
across and around Chicago, giving them the red carpet tour of
Harold’s city. During the machine tool depression of 1982,
Cadillac had every machine fully reconditioned and ready to
ship, but there were no sales. Since his job in the shop was completed, the Goldsteins’brought Kash up to the front office to
work the phones. He was so successful at bringing in new business that he never went back to the shop. Kash became an integral part of Cadillac Machinery with his expertise in product
knowledge. He speaks fluent German, and has a working knowledge of Spanish, Italian, Hungarian, Czechoslovakian, and
Polish, as well as seven Indian dialects. Kash is an associate
member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers
(ASME) and a senior member of the Society of Manufacturing
Engineers (SME).
They say it runs in the family, and one constant in the
Goldstein family has been their unflagging support and commitment to the MDNA. In 1951, Harold Goldstein was co-chairman
of the MDNA Convention for the association’s 10th anniversary at
the Drake Hotel in Chicago. Thirty-two years later, Marsha
Goldstein and the late Sidney Mandel of the Mandel Machinery
Company, chaired the 1983 MDNAConvention at Chicago’s
Marriott Hotel. In 1991, Michael and Marsha Goldstein were
co-chairman and co-chairwoman of MDNA’s 50th anniversary at
the Intercontinental Hotel in Chicago. Ten years later, Michael
and Marsha would co-chair the MDNAConvention commemorating the 60 th anniversary of the MDNAwhich was held at
Chicago’s Drake Hotel. The family’s list of MDNA awards run
from generation-to-generation and brother-to-brother. Harold
received the Randolph K. Vinson (formerly Man-of-the-Year)
Award in 1971.
Family business
more industry was moving, and more customer traffic was flying
in. The dealers could serve the industry better with larger facilities, large overhead craned buildings, and plenty of free parking.
Now, it’s changing again, and the move may be a little longer
than from Lake Street to O’Hare.
MDNA Director-At-Large Richard Goldstein, accepts the MDNA
Darryl D. McEwen Award from then-MDNAExecutive Vice
President, Darryl D. McEwen.
Harold Goldstein died in August of 1997. Machinery was at
the center of his life. He was a man of the metalworking industry,
and he had a gift for it, a touch for how to put together a plant
deal, to create an instant working relationship with an international source, to explain to elected legislators how to make things
work better. He and his friends had a knack for taking disposed
equipment or credit risky situations and, by means of marketing
leverage, make them profitable, buying at near scrap prices and
selling at top prices when the market pendulum swung back their
way. And, it always seemed to be swinging back for Harold. He
loved the excitement and the laughter and the wheeling and dealing of it. The phone always ringing. Nothing was denied him,
and everything was possible. He was there to encourage friends
and partners, to allow relationships to grow as quickly as possible
with as little interference and debate as possible. He wanted to
extend his company’s reach and success. Harold Goldstein
seemed perfectly cast for the part. He was successful and smart,
and the enthusiasm, indeed the avidity for life, for every phase of
it, seemed to jump out from him. He accomplished much and left
a proud legacy for his family and company to build on. ■
Michael earned the Earl Elman Distinguished Service Award in
1985. Richard Goldstein received the Darryl D. McEwen Award
last year. Cadillac Machinery has been a member of the European
Association of Machine Tool Merchants (EAMTM) for 26 years.
Michael has been on the EAMTM Council for 11 years, and is
the second longest serving council member in the history of the
association. Also Cadillac Machinery Company has been a member of the American Gear Manufacturing Association (AGMA)
for 14 years, and is the only used machinery company member of
the association.
The Cadillac Machinery Company began to make adjustments
to their business model over the past decade by becoming more
pro-active in export sales. They realized that machine tools have
become far more productive in the last 10 years, so the manufacturer needs less machines today to produce the same number of
goods that he needed to produce in 1990. During the last 20 years,
Americans are buying more than they ever have before but
they’re not buying U.S. made goods. Michael feels his company
and other used machinery dealers have to go where the manufacturing jobs are: Mexico, India, China, Korea, Thailand, Indonesia,
Turkey, South America, and Eastern Europe. In some recent years,
Cadillac Machinery has done as much as 80% of their annual
sales in the export market. Michael envisions marketing the
American machine tool industry as a product to the machine tool
consuming world. Change is a constant as it was when the storefront machinery dealers began to congregate on Lake and Clinton
Streets near Union Station and the Northwestern Train Station.
Later, the dealers moved near O’Hare International Airport where
Harold Goldstein 1917-1997